Sanitation has always been a problem with regard to toilet seats, particularly in public bathrooms. Wiping the seat prior to use may even be ineffective against some disease-causing organisms such as bacteria and viruses.
Several attempts have been made to address this problem. One relatively common means is the use of a circular cover which sits on the top portion of the toilet seat, with no means of securement thereon, thus this type of cover is prone to dislocation from its initial positioning. A reference to Kakiuchi, Japanese Patent No. 61-238215 teaches a configuration in which the legs 1 and 2 of the cover receive the ends of a U-shaped toilet seat, thus leaving a gap in the center. This is clearly shown in FIG. 4 where the Kakiuchi cover is shown in installed position.
The reference to Hefty et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,213,212, and to Asberg, Swedish Patent No. 87682, are essentially the same and it is believed that they can be discussed together. Both references disclose a continuous tubular toilet seat cover that includes a supply reel and a take-up reel, the cover being fed around a round toilet seat from back to front and then toward the back again to complete the circle. After use, the used portion is wound up on the take-up reed which in turn pulls a new segment of the continuous tubular member around the toilet seat. In both of these references, the cover is introduced from the back edge and proceeds around the front of the seat to the opposite rear edge of the seat. In addition, both the Asberg and Hefty et al. covers are continuous so that they may be wound around the seat from the supply reel to the take-up reel. These references involve a substantial investment in the mechanisms and in the continuous threading of the reels in order for the inventions to work as they are designed.
Thus, it can be seen that a need continues to exist for a toilet seat cover that avoids the disadvantage of the known prior art. It is to this need that the present invention is addressed.